It was the avengers returning from their search; her brothers hurrying in one after the other. The Colonel said, ‘How delightfully warm!’ rubbing his hands. Roger (Roger was always the kindest) came up to her and took her hand. She had risen up to meet them, and grasped with her other hand the only thing she could find to support her--the top of the screen which stood between her and the fire. ‘Joan!’ her brothers began, both speaking together. She was hoarse, her lips were baked, it was all she could do to articulate. ‘Nothing before the children!’ she said, with a harsh and breathless voice. ‘Joan, this does not matter. We have come to beg your pardon, most humbly, most penitently.’ ‘Fact is, it must all have been a mistake----’ ‘Say an invention, Reginald.’ ‘An invention--a cursed lie of that confounded girl! Hallo!’ There was a sudden crash and fall. The children all rushed to see, and Mrs. Blencarrow stood with the light streaming upon her, and the gilt bar of the screen in her hand. She had crushed it in her agitated grasp; the pretty framework of gilded wood and embroidery lay in a heap at her feet. The sound and shock had brought the blood rushing to her ghastly tragical countenance. She stood looking vaguely at the bar in her hand; but none of the children had any eyes for her--they were all on their knees in a group round the gilded ruin. Save Mr. d’Eyncourt and Emmy, no one noticed the terrible look in her face. ‘Come and sit down here while they pick up the pieces,’ said Roger. ‘Joan, I am afraid you are very angry, and you have reason; that we should have believed such a slander--of all the women in the world--of you! But, my dear, we are heartily ashamed of ourselves, if that is anything.’ ‘Most penitent,’ said the Colonel, ‘thoroughly ashamed. I said to Roger, “If ever there were men who had reason to be proud of their sister----”’ ‘And yet we gave a moment’s credence to such a barefaced lie!’ She heard them dimly as from a far distance, and saw them as through a fog; but the voices thus echoing and supplementing each other like a dull chorus gave her time to recover. She said sedately, not with any enthusiasm: ‘I am glad that you have found out--your mistake.’ Oh, heaven! Oh, miserable fate! But it was no mistake. Mrs. Blencarrow found herself after a time taking Kitty’s defence. ‘She got her own pardon for it. Her mother is a great gossip, and loves a tale against her neighbour. Don’t blame the girl too much.’ ‘If you excuse her, Joan, who should say a word? But why in all the world, thinking of an unlikely person to fasten such a slander upon, did she choose you?’ ‘Am I so unlikely, when my brothers believed it?’ she said, with a strange smile. An hour full of commotion followed. The boys never tired in showing each other and everybody else the flaw in the wood where the framework of the screen had broken. ‘But you must have leant on it very heavily, mamma.’